Think Positive—Stay Negative!

Leipzig-born printmaker Christiane Baumgartner has made a career out of combining the traditional handmade woodcut (the earliest and most laborious printmaking technique) with digital photography and video (the most recent and instantaneous means of reproduction), typically on a grand scale. This modest work, a tri-folded woodcut, bears the inscription “Think Positive—Stay Negative,” with the text cleverly shifting from black to white on a ground that alternates from light to dark. Baumgartner conceived the work, printed in an edition of 100, as a New Year’s card that she mailed to friends. It belongs to a small group of prints and drawings acquired during 2020 that document artists’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.